FW: Typos, duplicates, old/new names

Scott Atwood scott.roy.atwood at gmail.com
Fri Jun 12 07:39:18 UTC 2009


You may also want to look into the CLDR project, which is an open project to
provide common localization data, including translations for the names of
time zones.

http://cldr.unicode.org/

-Scott

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 9:12 PM, Naoko McCracken <info at nao-net.com> wrote:

> Scott,
>
> Thank you for your in-depth explanation of why the names are set up this
> way.
> It sounds like a lot more complicated set of information than I realized
> before.
> I have much appreciation for you all to be keeping the database available
> for
> other projects.
>
> Now that I understand the reasons,  it makes sense.
>
> This new type of timezone system was introduced in the current version of
> the
> program. It used to have a simple timezone selection with +- GMT; summer
> time was set manually.
>
> I'm not a programmer but more of a translator, so I'll work with others to
> figure out what we can do.
> Thank you so much for your help.
>
> Naoko McCracken
>
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Scott Atwood<scott.roy.atwood at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Naoko,
> >
> > The timezone identifiers used by the Olson timezone database aren't
> > necessarily intended for direct use by end users.  Many of the issues you
> > report are due to the rules and conventions used for selecting timezone
> > identifier names.
> >
> > The basic structure of the timezone identifiers is usually in two parts.
> > The first part identifies the continent or ocean in which the timezone is
> > located.  The second part is the name of the largest or most important
> city
> > within the timezone.  North America and South America are collapsed into
> a
> > single top level identifier of America.  This structure was chosen
> because
> > continents and cities tend to be relatively stable entities, but country
> > names and their borders can vary wildly over time.
> >
> > Indiana, Kentucky, and Argentina have particularly interesting time zone
> > histories, which means they contain relatively many timezones identified
> by
> > relatively nondescript cities.  So in order to avoid ambiguity and/or
> > conflict in timezone identifiers, an additional level in the timezone
> > hierarchy was introduced for these regions.
> >
> > Most of the issues you identify are related to backwards compatibility
> > links.  Once a timezone identifier has been created, it should remain
> stable
> > so that software that relies on an existing timezone identifier won't
> break
> > when the timezone package is updated.  So if a timezone identifier needs
> to
> > change, the old timezone identifier is kept as an alias for the new name.
> >
> > Most of the duplicates you note are due to changes in the preferred
> English
> > transliteration of foreign city names.  The abbreviations of Australian
> > timezones and the cardinal direction Australian timezones are deprecated
> > timezone identifiers that are backwards compatibility links to timezones
> in
> > the current Continent/City format.  When a city name changes, the old
> name
> > is kept as an alias for the new name.  ComodRivadavia is also a backwards
> > compatibility link.
> >
> > Unless these backwards compatibility links are causing serious issues
> with
> > your application, I urge you to leave them be, since they be required by
> > some clients who already rely on them.  However, it may not be
> unreasonable
> > to not display the backwards compatibility links in a UI that end users
> use
> > to select a new time zone.
> >
> > The timezone identifiers can only contain upper and lower case ASCII
> > letters, and underscores.  Spaces, apostrophes, and accented letters are
> not
> > allowed.  Hence Dumont d'Urville becomes DumontDUrville.
> >
> > And for what it's worth, there is a Central Western time zone in
> Australia,
> > but it is unofficial, and though it covers a large area, it encompasses
> only
> > a very small population.
> >
> > I hope this answers your concerns.  Please let me know if you have any
> > further questions.
> >
> > -Scott
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 6:16 AM, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]
> > <olsona at dc37a.nci.nih.gov> wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm forwarding this message from Naoko McCracken, who is not on the time
> >> zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the list, please direct
> >> replies appropriately.
> >>
> >>                                --ado
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Naoko McCracken [mailto:info at nao-net.com]
> >> Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 2:01
> >> To: tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov
> >> Subject: Typos, duplicates, old/new names
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I was directed to your project when I reported issues with WordPress
> >> language file.
> >> They use your timezone database via the php function
> >> timezone_identifiers_list() to fetch country names for:
> >>
> http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-i18n/pot/trunk/wordpress-continents-
> >> cities.pot
> >>
> >> My post:
> >> http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-polyglots/2009-May/003435.html
> >> Reply:
> >> http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-polyglots/2009-May/003439.html
> >>
> >> There are a couple more things reported by another language file
> >> maintainer:
> >> http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-polyglots/2009-May/003443.html
> >>
> >> I'm totally new here and not sure if I'm sending this to the right
> >> place.
> >> I'd appreciate it if someone can help me through to get these issues
> >> straightened.
> >>
> >> Thank you,
> >>
> >> ---
> >> Naoko McCracken
> >> http://ja.wordpress.org/
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Scott Atwood
> >
> > Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia.  ~H.G. Wells
> >
> >
> >
>



-- 
Scott Atwood

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia.  ~H.G. Wells
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